Mute pedal (tuner?)

I kind of have a need to change or plug-out the guitar while the amp is still on. The process now is to turn down volume on the guitar, then turn down volume on the amp, and then I can unplug the guitar without that scratching sound.
I was meaning to buy the tuner pedal to put it in the chain as a first pedal. Sure to use it as tuner, but most pedal also have mute function when in tuner mode. This way when changing the guitar I could just turn on the tuner (automatically mute amp), change the guitar and disable tuner.
Would that be ok or is there any better solution to remove that plug in/out scratching sound?
I also heard that that scratching pop sound could be bad for amp speaker itself… is it possible that it would also do damage to the tuner pedal?

A couple things that need some correction - You are not automatically muting the amp. the gain is still where it was, you are just disabling the signal path from the point that you are making the unwanted noise(unhooking the cable).

  1. the pedal may not cleanly isolate the amp. it may. you’d just need to figure that out.
  2. turning the guitar volume down doesn’t help. you are generating a big ‘noise’ after that volume knob by unhooking the cable.
  3. you won’t hurt the tuner. signal levels are pretty low at the guitar. it will still see the ‘pop’ when you change guitars, but it won’t really care.
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It’s pretty common to use a guitar tuner pedal to mute the signal when changing or not using a guitar.

If you watch any of the Anderton’s videos, when they are doing blind testing of guitars, and are switching them about, they tend to switch on a tuner pedal.

Cheers,

Keith

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Hi Bostjan,
I got this one and that was good
image

Later I bought the

image

line 6 relay G10th (wireless so no more hassle with cables :partying_face:) and there is one small pin thing on it that no longer gives that awful sound… :sweat_smile:

Hope this helps and not gives you more wishes to buy other things :roll_eyes: :smile:

Greetings

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There’s also the Neutrik Silent Plug option which cuts the output signal from your guitar as you start to pull the plug from the jack. I’ve outfitted a few of my cables with either a straight or a 90-degree version. You don’t need to turn down or mute anything, just grab the plug and pull. . .

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Hi Richard, @Richard_N
I know that they use that one in a guitar shop where I went once between lockdown 1 and 2 here … and I was immediately completely enthusiastic and given the extra costs they would have liked to sell it to me, but when I asked if that cable also had disadvantages, the seller/co-owner said that there was indeed a loss of quality with this cable plug.

I would now say the same system as with my cableless system ?? but I’m curious Although I don’t use such cables anymore :sweat_smile:

Now I haven’t looked into this further at all and I think/hope Keith @Majik knows more about this? :crossed_fingers:

Greetings

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TL;DR: Don’t worry about it.

You will degrade the signal a tiny bit with every switch or connector you add between your guitar and the amp but it is, usually, a very tiny bit. The degradation here is usually a loss of signal level but could be additional noise or distortion if the connector or switch is particularly bad, but that’s more unusual.

Bear in mind we are talking about a really, really, tiny amount in most cases, and not something you should really worry about for something like this cable (which I would hope is designed and constructed to minimise degradation).

Bear in mind that, as I said, this happens every time you make a connection, and that applies to pedals too: connecting into a tuner pedal and back out will cause a (possibly greater) degradation. Again, though, a single pedal isn’t usually going to be a problem worth worrying about. But the degradation accumulates, so bigger pedal board setups with lots of pedals and connections may run into problems.

It’s for this reason that a lot of pedals (especially the Boss ones) have buffers in which regenerate the signal. These buffers may increase distortion in the signal but, again, it’s not much and, often, the benefits of the buffer outweigh this downside.

Another factor is the cable itself: the cable is a big filter circuit and the longer the signal travels in the cable, the more it gets filtered. The effect is to roll off the high-end frequencies. Some players like this effect and the use of curly guitar cables is often related to this: they are said to sound “warmer”. This is probably because a curly guitar cable has a greater capacitance than the equivalent straight one (due to it being longer) and filters high-end frequencies more.

As for wireless guitar systems, modern systems are pretty good in terms of reproduction and the biggest factors are usually latency and interference/drop-out. Most of the modern ones have a very low latency of a few milliseconds or less, which is basically negligible.

But the other issue is that, because you don’t have a cable there doing that filtering, they can sound a bit harsh compared to an actual guitar cable. For this reason, many of these systems will emulate the filtering of a real guitar cable. Some have switches to change the emulated cable length.

Cheers,

Keith

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:laughing:

But Keith,
While it wasn’t even intended for myself, I still read it completely…and it was a good and clear story :sunglasses: , thanks

Greetings

1 Like